


To Clinch a Lifetime's Argument

by Shaitanah



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-14
Updated: 2012-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 04:33:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/339911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shaitanah/pseuds/Shaitanah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When all is said and done, Lee Adama sets out to explore the world. Yet there is something he can’t quite let go of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Clinch a Lifetime's Argument

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Battlestar Galactica belongs to Ronald D. Moore, Glen A. Larson and Sci-Fi. Title from “Fragile” by Sting.  
> A/N: It was supposed to be a drabble. I don’t know how the hell it grew into this and became so… emo.

He walked as fast as his legs could carry him, not because he wanted to get away from something, but merely because he wanted to feel himself running short of breath and he wanted to feel the wind in his face and drops of rain prickling at his skin, hot and cold at the same time, like memories. His hair was longer than he had ever worn it before, curly and matted, and it didn’t bother him in the slightest. Sometimes he ran his fingers through it, gripped the dusty strands tight and pulled, as if checking if all this: the lush green grass, the mountains so high you couldn’t see their peaks, the blue sky – if anything of this was real.

 

“President of the Twelve Colonies,” Romo had snorted when Lee had dropped by to bid his farewell. “The way we’re doing it now I might as well shove a bone in me nose and start dancing round a fire.”

 

“I’m sure you’ll find a way,” Lee had chuckled.

 

He had to admit it was quite an entertaining image. Romo ran things in the exact same fashion as he did everything else: briskly, unconventionally, not without an unhealthy dose of irony. He hadn’t really believed people would go for Lee’s idea of sacrificing all their habitual creature comforts for an uncertain prospect of a new beginning, but here they were, methodically stripping themselves of ranks and titles that were no longer of any use as their past burned in the sun without a trace.

 

Here they were.

 

“So,” Romo had said. “I take it you really are going.”

 

“I really am.”

 

“Mr Adama. I had a feeling you were meant for something great.”

 

In his own peculiar way, Romo had of course been right. There was greatness in climbing these unexplored mountains, in sweating in the heat of a new sun, in introducing himself to the taste of the wind and the smell of the earth. This untouched planet was not radically different from Caprica, albeit richer, fuller somehow, and while traversing the continent, Lee could allow himself to pretend that they would not ruin it like they had ruined the first Earth, or Kobol, or any one of the Colonies.

 

“Oh, come on, Lee, you know better,” Kara would say. And then she would laugh (he could not allow himself to forget the sound of her laughter for all the birdsongs and all the soothing rustling of leaves). “Okay, that’s the cynic in me talking. Sorry.”

 

“Where are you now?” he would ask even though she would never give him a straight answer.

 

“I’m at peace,” she said. “Can you believe that? Frakking peace. I’m bored.”

 

Sometimes it was: “I’m with Sam, playing pyramid in the sky.”

 

Or: “In your head, Lee. Where else would I be?”

 

When he allowed himself to see her, she always wore her hair short like the day he had met her. Long hair reminded him of what she was like on New Caprica. Moreover, it reminded him that she was dead.

 

He didn’t feel sorry for her. The way she put it, it was “pretty frakking good”, and he merely wondered if it felt that way for the others. If Zak, Dee, Laura and thousands of other people that had gone had found something _there_. Maybe it was just her. Starbuck had always been an adventurer.

 

“I never thought you were crazy enough to actually leave,” she laughed. “As in, on your own. Are you planning to walk around the entire planet or what?”

 

He hadn’t planned this far, but he wouldn’t be averse to the idea. Maybe he could write a book. No one would be able to read it because he would write on mountain slopes and leave markings in the sand and trace letters on the water surface–

 

And she said: “I’d read it. Just don’t write any songs.”

 

And she asked: “What’s it like to be free?”

 

“You tell me,” he said, and felt her lips ghosting close to his ear. He found it irresistibly funny that she was closer to him now than she had ever been. He felt for the first time that he didn’t have to share her with anyone: not his dead brother, nor her dead husband, neither destiny, nor duty. She was in his heart and mind, in his lungs like the planet, on the tip of his tongue like an outdated curse word, all over his skin like the half-forgotten feel of a pilot uniform.  

 

He caught glimpses of Sharons and Leobens and Sixes sometimes but he never came close enough to make contact. He could see that they settled into the change, reinventing themselves as they pleased, drifting away from their similarities. He wondered how long they would last, how long any of this would last, and he realized with startling clarity that he would return to his people as an old man, if at all.

 

“Kara,” he whispered to the stars (he never shouted at them anymore).

 

She asked: “What’s it called, Lee? The planet.”

 

He thought she knew everything. He thought things were impossibly clear from where she stood. But she kept asking questions, and he tried not to run out of answers.

 

He said: “I don’t know.” He thought: Can I just call it Kara? She’d probably like that and she’d probably laugh.

 

He jumped off a cliff once, or more accurately, he let himself fall into the shimmering pool of water, mindlessly enjoying the pull of gravity and the shock of the impact. The day was hot but the water chilled him to the bone as though a hundred icy needles pierced his skin. He came up gasping for air, wiped his face with his hands and watched the sun through his splayed fingers as it twinkled in his eye. Something trickled down his cheek. He knew then that it was not water and he allowed it because he was alone – and what else was there?

 

He moved forward. He only stopped once, and it was to ask her: “Hey, Kara, is that pyramid game still on?”

 

She said: “Always.”

 

“Save me a spot,” he said before letting her go.

 

As she melted away, he thought he heard her whisper: “Will do.” And he never saw her again but he knew that one day he would.

 

_February 12–14, 2012_


End file.
